Hamlet solioquy
Hamlet solioquyCondemned to Reality
Renowned for his unparalleled quality and quantity of work, William Shakespeare is not generally recognized as a great philosophical thinker. However it is seen in nearly all of his works that a great thinker is behind the words, which can be better appreciated by modern generations that value not only for his genius but his ability to explore concepts that were not fully examined until centuries after his death. In perhaps his most famous soliloquy taken from Hamlet, Shakespeare addresses not only the existential plight of man but inadvertently reveals the necessity of religion to mankind.
This piece is based on Hamlet’s view that existence is a struggle against the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (line 3). His outlook is marked by the sorrows of life and it is his belief that there is no happiness in mans existence. He is cursed “to grunt and sweat under a weary life”(22). Born into the blight of existence it has become a struggle for him to live daily. He has seen the “oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, [felt] the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay [and] the insolence of office” and feels that this are symptoms of an evil world in which he wants no part. He feels condemned to a world that he despises which is very essence of his anguish, the only escape he sees is that of death which presents its own dilemma, the infinite unknown. Hamlet asks, in lines fifteen through twenty-one why should a man not end his life and consequently end his suffering. He answers that man cannot because of the possibility that death is worse that life, so he commits to nothing and accordingly tells us that “conscience does make cowards of us all” speaking of his own failure to make a choice.
It would be a misconception to believe that Hamlet offers no possibility of and alternative to his problem. He does dream of what might await him in the afterlife. He fantasizes of being in “a sleep to… end the heartache” and ”perchance to dream” a basic escape from reality(5)(9). It is important that he uses sleep as an allusion to death being that death is unknown where as sleep is not an unsolvable mystery so in fact death and sleep are separate concepts that have coagulated in his mind. Death, as far as man knows, is final and in the mind of Hamlet might hold an even worse fate. There is not an option to wake up and once you have lost life in the world it seems that you have no control of what happens to you. This similar to Hamlet’s life, which promises only to make him “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”(2).
The use of “fortune” is also important in understanding this piece in that fortune carries the connation of fate, which man can never control. In either case he has little influence over his own destiny, death is an absolute end, and life is subject to the will of fate. So in fact Hamlet seems to be mourning for the loss of his free will. The only area of reality that he finds to be an acceptable alternative to live or death is the world that he creates in his dreams, which is ultimately a momentary illusion. This version of consciousness is a sanctuary in his world. It is the only time that the woes of the world can be forgotten and he can still, in some sense live. His rejection of reality is similar to that of any other person that also feels condemned to life, only a momentary escape. Hamlet cannot live in his dreams forever and is thus stuck in a reality where he is unable to find any happiness or conjure any hope for the future.
Karl Marx once said the religion is the opiate of the masses, hope in hopeless world. In this piece Shakespeare allows room for a similar hope. It is seen that in Hamlet’s view the world is cruel and existence is marked by suffering, he is utterly without hope. Very few, Hamlet included, can find hope without the comfort of believing that there is something better than their present reality. This is a hole for which many religions provide a filling; it gives these people sanctuary from an otherwise meaningless world. This sanctuary is nearly always an illusion that preys on imagination fueled by faith; it is an abstract place in which there is no longer suffering. It is a place for these people to hope for, and there existence now has meaning because someday the will find this spiritual asylum. This hope manifests itself in other aspects of life giving explanation to that which we cannot understand, namely death. Religion fills the void of this unknown by providing an explanation to that which is unexplainable for it is an “undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns” (25). It could be said that in this work it seems that Hamlet has found a very basic religion, that of his dreams. Much like any religion it is based on what is for all reasonable purposes a façade. It is similar in that it provides Hamlet with some sort of break from his agony as religion does for many individuals. He, however, knows that dreams are merely an illusion and will not let them shade his reality. In the end he realizes that he cannot commit to death or live and that “conscience does make cowards of us all”(29). In context he is merely expressing a disappointment that thought has led him to an unhappy live because he cannot take his own life due to of his rational fear of death, but it is also this same ironic conscience that will not allow him to accept any false hope upon his hypothetical death.
Shakespeare continues to sculpt the character of Hamlet in this passage and presents his depressing image of our world. Mankind is without hope, as Hamlet believes, unless we can find some meaning that is not an illusion. So we are now to question our own morality and values and try to understand if we feel that we are also trapped in a miserable world that lacks a decisive purpose. In many cases we answer that without faith in an illusion that we are, like Hamlet, condemned to only one life here on earth. But perhaps one can find the meaning in this world alone and strive to create that meaning through existence.